TRANSCRIPTION

My name is Tomashi Jackson. I'm a visual artist. 

Self-Portrait Tale of Two Michaels, was inspired by what I came to learn about Michael Brown Jr. Who was raised and died in Ferguson, Missouri, and Michael McDonald, who spent his formative years in Ferguson, Missouri. At the time I was researching the cases that led up to Brown versus the Board of Education, attempting to visualize a legislative history of public space, uh, with public education as the site the painting is a, is a color field painting painted on gauze, hanging free, connected by a strip of green canvas that I employ as a green screen through the video editing process. I use that green screen to hold images that I recorded from Al Jazeera, America's broadcast, Ferguson City Under Siege. Their documentation of Ferguson after Michael Brown's killer, Darren Wilson was found unaccountable for shooting someone with their hands up as they plead for their lives in the middle of the street. 

I'm accompanied in this piece by Alteronce Gumby. I joined him in a, in a color study that covers almost my entire body, safe from my mouth, that is free to lip sync or embody the lead vocals of Michael MacDonald and the Doobie Brothers song, “It Keeps You Running”. I felt like the song really encapsulated the way that I and many others felt and continue to feel about being vulnerable, vulnerable to the negative perceptions of color imposed upon us with the likelihood of death as an outcome and the very serious likelihood of no accountability for harm being done to us. So I juxtapose this very contemporary history of the devaluation of a life of a young black person in public space with the research I was doing about the revaluation of the lives of children of color and public space through fully resourcing public education.

Artist Tomashi Jackson explains the inspiration behind, Self Portrait: Tale of Two Michaels.

Museum of Contemporary Art Denver